Three of the remaining letters were from Corsica, and contained nothing of any significance. A fourth was written at Monte Carlo, in answer to an appeal for money, and the date was twelve years later than the first. It was a gloomy letter, the letter of a ruined man, who had drunk the cup of disappointment to the dregs.
“To ask me for help seems like a ghastly joke on your part. Whatever your troubles may be, I fancy my lookout is darker than yours. My wife and I have vegetated on that accursed island for just a dozen years—it seems like a lifetime to look back upon. We just had enough to live upon while my father was alive, for, bad as things were at Cheriton, he contrived to send me something. Now that he is gone, and the estate has been sold by the mortgagees, there is nothing left for me—and we have been living for the last two years upon the pittance my poor Milly gets from her father. Whatever your cares may be, you don’t know what it is to have a sick wife whose condition requires every luxury and indulgence, and to have barely enough for bread and cheese. If you were to see the house we live in—the tiled floors and the dilapidated furniture—and the windows that won’t shut—and the shutters that won’t keep to, and our two Corsican servants who look like a brace of savages, though they are good creatures in the main—you would be the last man to howl about your own troubles to me.
“I have been here a month, and with my usual diabolical luck. I am going home to-morrow—though perhaps I should be wiser if I went up into the hills behind Monaco and put a bullet through my brains. Millicent would be no worse off, God help her; for she is entirely dependent on her father, and I am only an incubus,—but she might think herself worse off, poor soul, so I suppose I had better go home.
“What am I thinking about? I can’t afford to take refuge in the suicide’s haven. My life is insured in the Imperial for £3,000, and poor old Dangerfield has been paying the premium ever since I began to go to the bad financially. It would be too hard upon him if I shot myself.”
This was the last letter, and it was endorsed by the brother’s hand.
“Reginald’s last letter. I read in the Times newspaper of his being drowned at Nice ten days afterwards.”
Theodore made a note of the dates of these letters, and the name of the insurance office. Provided with these data it would be easy for him to verify the fact of Colonel Strangway’s death, and thus bring the history of the two sons of old Squire Strangway to its dismal close in dust and darkness.
And thus would be answered Juanita’s strange suspicion of the house of Strangway, answered with an unanswerable answer. Who can argue with Death? Is not that at least the end of all things—the road that leads no whither?
There remained for him only the task of tracing the erring daughter to her last resting-place. This would doubtless be more difficult, as a runaway wife living under a false name, and in all probability going from place to place, was likely to have left but faint and uncertain indications of her existence. But the first part of his task had been almost too easy. He felt that he could take no credit for what he had done, could expect no gratitude from Juanita.